


bang bang (my baby shot me down)

by aghamora



Series: Flaurel Ficlets [31]
Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post 2x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Wes's gun claims another victim during Murder Night 2.0.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bang bang (my baby shot me down)

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: 'one of them gets hurt and the other one is like super worried.'

“I need you at the house. Wes, he’s… freaking out, because of Annalise, and Rebecca, a-and it’s all falling apart, and I need you over here, Frank, I need you.”

Laurel’s call had been frantic and brief. Frank hadn’t even had time to ask her what she’d meant about Rebecca before the other line had gone dead. She’d sounded more distraught than he’s ever heard her; she’s rarely anything less than totally composed, and so he knows this must be really fucking bad, if even equanimous Laurel is in panic mode.  

So he gets behind the wheel and guns it, speeding away from the woods where he’d left Catherine. He doesn’t have time to ponder the fact that he’s just framed a maybe-innocent girl and left her in the woods to be eaten by coyotes in her sleep, for all he knows; he’ll worry about that later, if at all. Laurel needs him, and after the events of tonight, and not being able to see her for hours, he’s worried sick. She can’t be safe until she’s with him, and he’s done doing Annalise’s dirty work, right now.

He makes it to the office in record time, violating just about every traffic law in the book and running four red lights. It’s almost three AM by the time he ascends the front porch steps and turns the doorknob, finding it unlocked, creaking open before he can use his key. He frowns, and pushes it in the rest of the way, stepping into the foyer and making his way down the hallway – where he finds Laurel sitting at the bottom of the stairs, shaken but unharmed.

She looks up when she hears his footsteps, and he goes to her immediately. “Laurel.”

Laurel doesn’t say anything. She just hurries over and all but flings herself into his arms, squeezing him tightly, her hands trembling as they grab onto his suit jacket. She isn’t crying, but her voice is breathy, panicked when she speaks, and she’s shaking, enough to let him know that she is anything but  _okay_.  

“You’re here,” she whispers against his shoulder, holding him with desperation he’s never seen in her before. “Oh God, Frank, it was awful.”

“What happened?” he asks, pulling back to look at her. “Annalise-”

“She tried to get us to shoot her. To… make it look like Catherine did it. And she…” Her voice breaks. “She… said things, to us, to make one of us want to shoot her. She brought up my dad – but I wouldn’t do it, and so…”

Though he wants nothing more than to kiss her silent, Frank doesn’t, waiting instead for her to finish.

“And so she told Wes about Rebecca,” she finally murmurs, and he freezes. “Said that she’s dead. I don’t even know if it’s true, or if she was… lying to make him do it, but – God, he did it, Frank, he shot her, and now she might die a-and… I was so scared-”

“Hey,” he says, shushing her and drawing her head back against his shoulder. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you now. Just – I shoulda been there. I was worried as hell.”

“Me too,” she confesses against his shirt. “I thought something would happen to you.”

He presses a kiss to her hair, stroking it with one hand. “Nothin’ did. Nothin’ ever will. It’ll take a hell of a lot to kill me, all right? You know that.”

She lets out a breath, then nods, relaxing against him – and he can finally relax too, because now Laurel is here, and she’s in his arms, and she’s safe. They both are, and that’s all he needs.  _She’s_  all he needs.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, if they’ll all be in jail, locked up for the rest of their lives. He has no fucking clue. Laurel is his only certainty, his one constant. The rest of the world can go to hell, as long as he has her.

She pulls back after a minute and flattens her lips into a grim line. “Wes is in the next room. I’ve never seen him like this. After shooting Annalise, finding out about Rebecca… He’s calmed down now, but before, I-I thought he might hurt himself, or me.”

He has half a mind to leave now and take Laurel with him, but instead Frank nods, stepping toward the living room.

“C’mon. If you’re worried, we’ll go check on him.”

Cautiously, as if approaching a wounded animal, they make their way into the living room and find Wes sitting on the couch, with his eyes locked ahead in a thousand-yard stare. Even from a distance Frank can tell he’s shaking violently – but the sorrow leaves Wes’s face in flash when he looks up and notices the two of them approaching, replaced by quiet, deadly fury as he goes from Puppy to Attack Dog in all of 0.2 seconds.

That’s when Frank notices the gun sitting before him on the coffee table – the gun he’d used to shoot Annalise, he can only assume – but before he can make his way over and snatch it out of the kid’s reach, Wes shoots to his feet, grabs it instead, and aims it directly at him.

“ _You_ ,” he hisses, a wild look in his eyes. “It was you.”

He freezes. Normally, he wouldn’t be scared of the Puppy with a gun for a second – but right now, in his wild state of mind after shooting Annalise, the kid is way more of a loose cannon.

A loose cannon that looks really goddamn eager to fire.  

Laurel backs away at the same time he does. “Wes… Wes, put the gun dow-”

“You killed Rebecca,” Wes accuses, eyes locked on Frank. “It was you.  _I know_ it was you.”

“Woah, hey. I didn’t kill your little girlfriend, okay?” he snaps, holding up his hands in a show of surrender.

“Don’t lie to me!” Wes cries. “Annalise lied to me, all the time. To my face. E-every time I asked her about Rebecca, she lied. How do I know you’re not lying now?”

He clenches his jaw, keeping his voice steady, even as he stares down the barrel of a gun. “I’m not lyin’. I didn’t kill her, Gibbins. Now put the gun down before you hurt somebody.”

But Wes shakes his head.

“Yes you did. Annalise wouldn’t have done it herself. You always do her dirty work. It was _you_ , and I know it!”

“Wes,” Laurel cries behind him. “Wes, please, don’t. You’re upset, and after everything tonight, enough. _Enough_!”

Wes glances over at Laurel briefly, shaking his head. “You know he did it, Laurel. He killed Rebecca, and he lied to us, lied to our faces, when we asked what that suitcase of money was for. He said she was alive – but all the time, he lied to you, and he lied to me, and she’s  _dead_.”

Laurel doesn’t say anything. Frank isn’t sure if she believes him or not, but chooses not to dwell on that right now, not when he’s got a gun pointed at him. He’s right; he  _did_  lie, to him, to Laurel, to all of them – but he didn’t kill Rebecca. Of that he’s innocent, yet he has the sense that no matter how many times he says that, Wes won’t believe him.

Briefly, he considers his options. He could knock the gun out of his hands – but that means risking it firing and hitting one of them, maybe Laurel, so that’s out of the question. He could run, and he’s pretty sure Wes wouldn’t shoot him in the back if he did – but he’s not leaving Laurel alone, not when Wes is out of his mind like this.

So Frank stays where he is, holds his ground, unrelenting.

“You really wanna shoot someone else tonight?” he demands. “Put the gun down. Don’t make me ask you again.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me too?”

“Look-”

“You’re a murderer,” he continues, half-hysterical. “This… You deserve this. I’m already going to jail, for Annalise probably. I… I have nothing left to lose, and I’m doing this for Rebecca. Her blood is on  _your_ hands.”

His finger squeezes the trigger, dangerously close to firing. Behind him, Laurel starts screaming, begging him over and over to lower the gun, repeating “Enough, enough. Enough death, enough blood,  _enough_ Wes!”

“She’s right,” Frank tries to urge him. “Enough. Sam. Rebecca. Hell, now  _Annalise_ might die. We’ve had enough death in this house, Gibbins.”

“Right. We have. Because you killed Rebecca – and who else? Were there others, for Annalise?”

“I didn’t off your girlfriend. It wasn’t me.”

“Who, then?”

_Bonnie._  He almost says the name, to talk him down, but stops himself. Bonnie, who’s like his sister, who has seen so much horror, so many fucked-up things in her life… He’ll protect her too, to his last dying breath. So he stays quiet, and Wes just gives a maniacal half-sob, half-laugh. Something switches on in his eyes. Something deadly.

“So it  _was_  you. You’re not even denying it.”

Time seems to blur around Frank just then, like he’s watching a movie instead of living his own life. It all happens in slow motion, and somehow in the blink of an eye, too. Wes raises the gun again, and cocks it. Laurel starts yelling –  _Wes don’t, please, don’t kill him, please!_  – but her voice sounds far-off, like it’s a million miles away.

Then, just as he’s about to fire, Laurel darts in front of him, in a last-ditch effort to stop him, and before Frank can reach out and shove her to the side-

_Bam_!

A gunshot cuts through the air, sharp and piercing. Frank braces himself for the searing pain, but it never comes. It hadn’t hit him, or even grazed him.

Instead, in front of him, Laurel jerks roughly to the side. She inhales sharply, and stumbles backward, leaning against the end table beside her as one of her hands flies to her stomach.

It comes away red. Damningly red.

“ _Laurel_!”

The word leaves his mouth in a burst. His arms shoot out, catching her just before she stumbles again and falls. He lowers himself onto his knees and pulls her against him, taking in the dark splotch of red seeping through her thin blouse and the blood on her hands, glistening in the moonlight.

No. _No, no, no._

Beside them, Wes drops the gun, eyes wide with horror, and reaches out to her too. “Oh my God. Oh God, Laurel-”

“Stay the hell away from her!” Frank growls, so rough and feral he barely even recognizes his own voice. “Call 911.  _Now_!”

Wes hesitates, then nods frantically and dashes into the kitchen. Frank doesn’t spare him another glance, and turns back to Laurel, who is staring at her hands almost like she doesn’t realize the blood on them is her own. God – the  _blood_. It flows out in a gory river, so much and so suddenly, and Laurel’s so small already, she can’t bleed this much and make it, and God,  _fuck_ , he’d sooner kill himself than lose her like this…

But no.  _Calm._  It won’t do her any good if he loses his shit right now. She needs him.

“Hey,” he lowers his voice, shrugging off his suit jacket, trying to swallow the lump in his throat, and urging her to rest back against the chair behind her.  “You’re gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay.”

“He…” she breathes, pale, her eyes wide with disbelief and her features scrunched up in pain. “He shot me.”

Struggling to maintain at least some semblance of composure, Frank doesn’t say a word. He just grabs ahold of her blouse and rips it in two, revealing the wound beneath. Stop the bleeding; he has to stop the bleeding, that’s all he knows. Stop the bleeding, and she’ll live, and he won’t lose her. But she’d been hit square in the stomach, and he’s not stupid. He knows it’s possible that she’s already dying, and there’s not a thing he can do to save her.

With that in mind, Frank gulps, and presses his jacket against the wound, as hard as he can.

“Press down. We gotta stop the bleeding.”

“It hurts,” she whimpers, not making a move to help. “It… it’s too much.”

_Too much_. He knows what she means: too much blood. He pulls his hands back briefly, and they’re soaked in blood, too. It’d seeped through his suit jacket in seconds.

There’s  _too much_.

“No, it isn’t,” he tells her, as firmly as he can. “You’re gonna be fine. Now press down. Hard. Harder.”

Laurel does, for a moment, her breathing labored and shallow, but after a few minutes, she stops, and reaches her hand up to place it on his cheek, urging him to meet her eyes.

Frank has seen a man die, before. He has killed. He knows the way the life seeps out of a person’s eyes, knows how they go dull and take on that sickly yellow hue of death. Knows that, once that happens, it’s usually too late.

“I love you,” she murmurs, her voice shaking.

And he sees it then, as the words leave her mouth. The look of death in her. Her eyes are bleary, unfocused. The life is draining out of them, of her; he can feel it, fucking  _feel_ it, as she grows weaker in his arms, as time passes and still there’re no sirens outside.

He should be thrilled to hear those words, but he’s not. He knows why Laurel is saying them. She’s giving up, and the thought sends such a spike of panic through him that he feels his heart drop, and his stomach roil.

“No,” he growls, and his voice cracks before he can help it. “No. Don’t you dare say that just ‘cause you think you’re dying, Laurel. You’re  _not_.”

“I love you,” Laurel repeats, with a sad, resigned little smile. “I do. I should’ve told you sooner, but…”

Tears sting his eyes. He blinks them away, clenching his jaw so hard it hurts.

“And you’re gonna tell me later, too. I’m not letting you die, you hear me?”

Laurel shifts in his arms, dropping her hand down from his cheek and lacing her bloody fingers through his. Gently, she pulls his hand away from her stomach, stopping him from applying any pressure. Letting herself bleed.

“Say it back,” she breathes, a tiny glimmer of hope in her eyes. “Just… I want to hear it, before-”

Before she dies. Before she leaves him. No.  _No_.

“ _No_ ,” Frank spits, harsher than he’d intended, so harsh she flinches. “No. I’m not saying it, because you aren’t dyin’ tonight.”

He won’t say it. He won’t, even though he does. He loves her so fucking much that he has no clue how he’d ever exist in a world without her, but if he tells her now, if he says it back, he’ll be admitting she’s dying too, and he won’t fucking do that. He won’t give up on her.

Laurel shrinks back at the harshness of his tone, like a wilting flower. “Don’t yell at me, Frank.”

The words make him melt, and soften his tone, pulling her closer and pressing down on the wound again. He pictures it, briefly. Living without her. Waking up alone every morning, without the heat of her body next to him, to cold, empty sheets. Suddenly, he realizes that he’d envisioned having that, and having _her_ , for the rest of his life. He’d been so sure that they would have more time.  _So much_  more time. They haven’t had enough together – only months.

They’ll have more. They have to have more. He’s not ready to be without her yet. Not fucking _ready_.

He’s crying now, or at least he thinks he is. None of this feels real. He feels numb, cold, and Laurel is slipping, her eyelids drooping – and if she goes, if she dies, then he has half a mind to reach for the gun and blow his brains out, right here next to her.

“I love you,” he finally croaks, pressing a desperate kiss to the top of her head. “So you can’t go. I need you, okay? Stay awake. I know you feel like you wanna sleep, you’re losing blood, but… stay awake. For me.  _Fuck_ , Laurel, I won’t let you die.”

_Why’d you do it?_ he wants to ask. _Why the hell did you do it? Take a bullet for me? It should’ve been me. It should’ve been_ me. _Not you. Never you._

Then, out of nowhere, outside – sirens. The blaring of sirens, accompanied by blue and red flashes of light, reflecting off the windows around them.

Laurel summons up a smile, nodding weakly. “Okay. All right. I know you won’t.”

She doesn’t sound like she believes it. If he’s being honest, he’s not sure he does, either.

It’s all a blur, after that. He kisses her desperately until the paramedics rush in, lifting Laurel up onto a stretcher, and he watches with a sobbing Wes as they take her away. At the last second, he tries to barge into the ambulance with her, yells and cusses at the men who try to hold him back, until finally relenting and following them to the hospital, gripping his steering wheel with shaking, bloody hands.

And when he runs alongside a gurney for the second time tonight as the doctors wheel her in, begging them not to let her die, to save her life, he doesn’t do it for an alibi. He means every word.

_Tell me, is she gonna be okay? She can’t die. Please, don’t let her die. Don’t let her die!_

 

–

 

After a brief scuffle, hospital security finally succeeds in wrangling him out into the waiting room, and it’s there that he waits.

Wes hadn’t come with him. For all he knows, the kid is halfway to Mexico by now, fleeing from the police after shooting two people, killing Sam. He doesn’t know if Annalise is dead, or alive, or dying. She might be at this hospital, but he doesn’t care to ask. He’s consumed with fear for Laurel.

Eventually, as the hours blur together, he starts to pray. He’s never been a religious man. He was raised Catholic, of course; he’s Italian to the bone, attended Sunday mass as a child, went through the motions, but never really  _believed_. He’d never thought it made much sense that there was some omnipotent, all-knowing higher power who could cast you down or raise you up at the drop of a hat. As he’d gotten older, when he’d killed for the first time, he’d given up on all hopes of a God, and if there was a God, he’s pretty sure God had given up on him then, too.

Maybe that’s what this is: divine retribution, for the lives he’s taken. Karma. Laurel is his light. His everything, and he’ll lose her. He _can’t_  lose her. He’ll lose his mind if she dies. Go fucking insane.

It would’ve been better if he’d never picked her for the team at all, he realizes. This is on him. She never would’ve gotten mixed up with Annalise, Sam, Sinclair, or any of this mess in the first place; she would’ve stayed a normal law student, been…  _normal_. She sure as hell wouldn’t be on the brink of death like she is now, because she’d tried to save him.  _Why_? He would’ve deserved that bullet and probably half a dozen more – but Laurel? God, not Laurel, anyone but Laurel-

“Is there anyone here for… Laurel Castillo?”

He freezes, his head snapping up at the sound of her name, tears drying on his cheeks. In the doorway stands a doctor, clipboard in hand, unreadable expression on his face, and Frank shoots to his feet immediately, almost tackling the man.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. What is it? She okay? Is she-”

“Out of surgery,” the man finishes for him, and Frank almost collapses in relief. “And awake. The bullet, thankfully, missed most of her major organs. The damage it did do we were able to repair. She’s weak, lost a lot of blood, and on a great deal of morphine, but she’ll be all right.”

_She’ll be all right_. He wants to get down on his knees and thank a God he’s never believed in, right then. She’ll be all right. All right.  _Alive._

“Can I…” he drifts off, his throat tightening. “Can I see her?”

The man looks at him for a moment as if trying to figure out something, then asks, “Are you Frank?”

“Yeah, why?”

“She’s been asking for you,” he answers, and nods in the direction of the hallway. “I’ll take you to her.”

It feels surreal as he walks down the hallway, trailing behind the doctor, like his limbs and his body aren’t his own. By the time he reaches the door and the doctor stops, motioning for him to step inside, his heart is beating a mile a minute, and his palms are clammy.

The room is quiet when he steps in. He turns the corner, and there is Laurel, lying upright in her hospital bed, eyes open. She’s hooked up to all kinds of IV’s and monitors, clad in a blue hospital gown and paler than he’s ever seen her – but when she glances over, and her eyes meet his, none of that matters. All that matters is the light in her eyes, and the steady beeping of the heart monitor as a green line traces up and down, signaling indisputable  _life_.

He goes to her at once, bending down and curling his arms around her. “Laurel. God, I was so worried.”

“I’m okay,” she murmurs, and pulls away, giving him a loopy little smile and tapping the IV on her wrist, pumping her system full of drugs. “Great, actually. High as a kite.”

He gives a thick, tearful laugh, taking her hand and pressing kisses to the back of it, over and over.

“Glad to hear it. I just…” he drifts off, voice catching. “I thought I was gonna lose you. I was goin’ crazy. I-”

“It’s all right,” she reassures him, and reaches out, placing a hand on his cheek and urging him to look up at her. “Hey. I’m all right.”

“Why’d you do it?” Frank asks, before he can think better of it. “Take a bullet for me? Jesus, it shoulda been me he shot, Laurel. Not you. You could’ve died.”

Laurel pauses to think, frowning a little. “I… I don’t know. I just – he was going to shoot you, Frank, and I couldn’t let him…  _do_  that. That was all I was thinking.”

He stops, letting her words sink in, before chuckling again and swallowing the lump in his throat.

“Yeah, well, the next time there’re bullets involved in anything, I’m taking ‘em. We clear?”

Laurel relaxes back against the bed, and smiles too. “Crystal. Believe me, this… is _not_  an experience I’m eager to repeat.”

They lapse into silence, for a while. He holds her hand, kissing it over and over, until Laurel finally laughs and pats the bed next to her, signaling for him to sit. Frank does, and pulls her against him, breathing in the scent of her. He places his hand on one of her wrists, the one that isn’t hooked up to the IV, right in the place where he can feel her pulse fluttering, and leaves it there, letting the steady thumping of her heartbeat wash over him until his nerves are finally calmed and his hands have stopped trembling.

“I meant what I said,” she says suddenly. “When I said I loved you.”

His eyes twinkle with mirth. “Yeah? That you or the morphine talking?”

“Little of both. But I meant it. I  _mean_  it.”

“Good,” Frank tells her, and slings an around her shoulders. “’Cause so did I.”

“Mmm, and you know what?” she giggles, glancing sideways at him. “Your beard looks like a hedgehog on your face right now.”

He scoffs. “Good to know. Now get some rest, before you start hallucinating other woodland creatures on my face.”

Laurel nods, and doesn’t say another word. She just lays her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes, and that comforting weight of her head, the light sound of her breathing as she falls asleep… It all makes him want to weep like a child again. There’s so much they have to talk about, he knows. Wes, and Rebecca, and Annalise, and the shitshow that was last night, and the fact that probably, maybe, they’re all going to end up in jail because of it.

But right now, he doesn’t give a fuck about any of that. Right now, as far as he’s concerned, there is no world beyond these four walls, and the two of them.


End file.
